By now it is safe to say that most people and businesses that produce content online understand the importance of sharing their content through Social Media profiles once a blog post or article goes live. You have probably also noticed that Twitter can be one of the best ways to gain some traction for your content and generate some traffic for your website or blog – If you do it the right way, that is.

The following outlines a number of important and simple to implement strategies to help you get the most out of your content using Twitter.

The title of your article is not always the best way to use your 140 characters

Even though it seems to be the default and simplest way to share your latest content on Twitter, writing the title of your post and adding a shortened URL is not the best way to use your limited characters. If you want gain more exposure, re-tweets, shares, mentions, and have your tweets favored by other users, it is important to customize your message. While you can do it on occasion, don’t always hit the tweet button and send your post without giving it some thought.

5 Ways to increase engagement for blog posts using Twitter

Use tips: Rather than using the name of your blog post, you will get more engagement if you offer up a tip from your blog post and then provide a link to your post. For example, if you had a blog post titled “5 Tips for using twitter to promote your blog post” you are better off using one of the tips you mentioned in the post (i.e. “TIP: Include stats in your twitter messages to increase re-tweets URL #Hashtag1 #Hashtag2”

Use Statistics: People love statistics. If you have statistics in your blog post take advantage of them by including them in your tweets. For example, “Find out why XX% of people get more re-tweets when they use stats in Tweets URL #Hashtag1 #Hashtag2”

Ask Questions: Asking questions are a great way to engage people in conversations on Twitter. If you posed questions in your blog post, use them. You can also think of questions related to your post that will get your twitter followers attention. The more thought provoking the question, the more attention it will receive in twitter feeds.

Recycle posts: Recycling posts is a great way get some traction after you initial Tweet has gone out. Keep in mind that reposting exactly the same message over and over can be redundant, so try to change up the messaging in your tweet each time you link to your blog post.

A great way to do this is to use the tips or key messages from your blog post in your twitter message. Using the example above, if your blog post is titled “5 Tips for using twitter to promote your blog post” you could conceivable write 5 tweets using each one of the “5 Tips” as content for your tweets.

Time Tweets correctly: Timing can play a big role in the level of engagement that you can expect for your tweets and for your blog posts. This is why it’s important to pay attention to the times when you get the most traction on your twitter account. Also, don’t forget to automate and schedule your posts so they go out at optimal times.

Do you find that Twitter is one of the most effective social tools to promote your content online? What tips and tricks to you find yield the best results?